Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

From the day a child is born, they are considered a clean slate where their innocence is valued about all. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the child narrator, Scout Finch, is used to describe the innocence of not knowing the harms of the world. Childhood innocence doesn’t last forever and is only truly valued when it is gone. Scout lives in an old neighborhood filled with grown people. The only other children are Jem Finch, her brother, and Charles Baker Harris who goes by Dill. The small town of Maycomb, Alabama is known to be tired and old. There is little to none excitement and the town is known to be safe. This has a huge impact Scout which causes her to be naïve and innocent. The town consisting of old people causes the ones around

No one knows who they are going to marry when they grow up as a child. Scout seems quite convinced she will marry Dill when she says, “…we’re going to get married as soon as we are big enough. He asked me last summer” (Lee 68). Many children don’t understand that relationships don’t last forever. The concept of forever is such an innocent idea that only children tend to believe it. They haven’t faced the hardships that will lead them to know just how long forever really is. This use of pathos makes the reader envy Scout’s innocence. As you grow older and start to realize not everyone is going to stay in your life forever, your perception of the world changes. Harper Lee has an interesting way of making you feel warm and fuzzy inside thinking of your childhood innocence. She also achieves this effect through the use of

Harper Lee shows slight signs of the loss of innocence as she gets older and tries to understand things. As Scout loses this innocence, she won’t get it back. An example of her loss would be when she thinks to herself, “As Atticus once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it…” (Lee 48). This metaphor showed the reader her slight maturing as she starts to understand how others feel. When you are a child you care about others, but you never try to step into their shoes and see how they feel. Your concerns generally revolve around yourself. As she is maturing, she won’t be able to go back and have the innocence of not knowing how others feel. The thing about innocence is that you don’t realize the loss until it’s too late and you’ll never be able to get it